Hill people

Hill people is a general term for people who live in hills and mountains. There are hill people around the world, many of whom live in stone houses and herd goats, sheep or camelids or have small farms. Musical instruments of the hill people, such as various forms of bagpipe and horn are notable for their ability to be heard at great distances. Hill people are often divided into tribes that have a tradition of feuding among each other while resisting control by any central government. Often the hill people are minorities in their countries, and are divided by political borders.

The Drakensberg are the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising up to 3,482 metres (11,424 ft) in height. The people of these mountains are mostly Bantu-speaking people who moved into the area from the north a thousand years ago, displacing the original Khoisan people. They include the Swazi, Xhosa and Zulu. Traditionally these people lived by cattle herding and small-scale farming, growing crops such as sorghum, maize, corn, pumpkins, beans and vegetables.[1]

At the time the Europeans reached this part of South Africa (around 1830), the Zulu were temporarily in the ascendancy after a series of wars between the people of the region.[2] The region is divided between South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, but the people move relatively freely between these states.[1]

Ethiopia has a high central plateau that varies from 1,800 to 3,000 m (6,000 to 10,000 ft) above sea level, with the highest mountain reaching 4,533 m (14,872 ft). Near the equator but high up, the climate is temperate all year round. The heavy rains from June until mid-September feed the Blue Nile, which waters Egypt.[3]

The Ethiopian state is ancient, dating back to at least the Aksumite Empire (which officially used the name "Ethiopia" in the 4th century) and its predecessor state, D`mt (with early 1st millennium BC roots). Despite two attempts at conquest by the Italians, the country has remained independent for almost all its history. The Coptic Christian church has a long history in Ethiopia. It was founded in 316 AD by Meropius, a Christian philosopher from Tyre.[6]

The Atlas is a mountain range across a northern stretch of Africa extending about 2,400 km (1,500 mi) through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, or the Maghreb. The highest peak is Jbel Toubkal, with an elevation of 4,167 metres (13,671 ft) in southwestern Morocco. The second highest mountain is the M'Goun of 4,071 metres (13,356 ft).

Most Berbers are farmers, living in mountains relatively close to the Mediterranean coast, but the Tuareg and Zenaga of the southern Sahara are nomadic. The Berbers are sometimes treated as minorities in their countries, which are dominated by their Arabic-speaking relatives nearer to the coast.[7]

It is thought that Basque people are a remnant of the early inhabitants of Western Europe. Basque tribes were already mentioned in Roman times by Strabo and Pliny, including the Vascones, the Aquitani and others. Their language is quite distinct from the Indo-European languages spoken in most of Europe, and possibly (although there is much debate) is related to Northeast Caucasian languages.[8] The Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA is an illegal and armed Basque nationalist, terrorist and separatist organisation. Founded in 1959, it evolved from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to a paramilitary group demanding Basque independence.[9]

Early Alpine tribes included the Helvetii and Alemanni. The Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps founded by three cantons in 1291, later expanding to form the nucleus of modern Switzerland. Disciplined Swiss mercenaries armed with pikes gained a formidable reputation during the perennial European wars of the Middle Ages.

In the Swiss peasant war of 1653 the people rose up against the nobles and authorities. Although defeated, the revolt resulted in reforms that prevented the rise of absolutism as in other parts of Europe. The Swiss to this day have an unusual form of government where almost all major decisions are voted upon by the people.

The Alpine people have at times been subject in part or whole to neighboring countries, but many in the central Alps maintained the independence of their communities until 1848, when they combined into the federal state of Switzerland.[10]

The Apennines stretch from modern day Liguria to Reggio Calabria, and mountain towns and communities can be found throughout the whole of the Apennine mountain range. However, certain regions, especially Abruzzo, Molise, Umbria, and Marche, are home to larger, more prototypical mountain cultures, and these cultures often remained largely isolated from the wider Italian peninsular culture until modern times. The region of Abruzzo in particular is well known for its mountain shepherd culture, with Teramo, Chieti, and L'Aquila being the most mountainous of Abruzzo's provinces. Abruzzo holds many of Italy's best-preserved and most beautiful medieval and Renaissance hill towns.The region is also the location of Gran Sasso and Abruzzo National Park, a haven for mountain-dwelling fauna such as the Abruzzo chamois, Italian wolf, and the Apennine brown bear. Shepherd culture, which often thrives in mountainous regions, has significantly influenced the cultures of the Abruzzese peoples and other central Apennine peoples. For instance, bagpipes known as zampogna, traditionally made from sheep or goat skin or organs, are prominent in traditional Abruzzese and central and southern Apennine folk music. Sheep dishes such as arrosticini are also common in Abruzzese and central Apennine cuisine.

On festive occasions, the people eat haggis, made from a sheep's heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and boiled in the animal's stomach for three hours. The haggis was immortalized by the lowland poet Robert Burns in his Address to a Haggis.[11]

The Scottish clans have a tradition of feuding among each other and resisting the authority of the central government based in the lowland city of Edinburgh.[12] The Highland regiments went to war wearing tartankilts accompanied by bagpipe players – a sight and sound calculated to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies.[13]

A woman of Thrace, of the Shop Tribe, and of Macedonia. Painting by Jan Mrkvička[14]

The Balkan Mountains run 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. The highest peaks of the Stara planina are in central Bulgaria. The highest peak is Botev (2,376 m).

The people of these mountains have very diverse origins, with cultures influenced by periods of Turkic, Iranian and Russian control. Some, including the Georgians and Armenians, are mostly Christian, while others are Muslim in religion.[16]

Fruit, vegetables and sheep flourish in the fertile valley of Kashmir. The people have evolved the unique and famous Kashmiri cuisine with Iranian, Indian and Turkic origins. While the stricter Hindus may restrict themselves to rice with vegetables, curd, milk and fresh fruit, the Muslims eat pilaf and mutton stuffed with spices, apricots stuffed with mutton, roast kid, fish and honey rice.[21]

Further east, a typical Nepalese meal includes Dal, a spicy lentil soup, served over bhat (boiled rice) with tarkari (curried vegetables) together with achar (pickles) or chutni (spicy condiment made from fresh ingredients). In the hills of Nepal, people enjoy their own kind of music, playing sarangi (a string instrument), madal (a hand drum) and flute. They also have many popular folk songs known as lok geet and lok dohari.[22]

Many of the tribes are spread across more than one country - the Karen people live in Burma and Thailand, the Zou people live in Burma and India, and the Akha people live in small villages among the mountains of China, Laos, Burma, and northern Thailand. They often retain their traditional way of life but are under increasing pressure to do so. As minorities, they tend to be less well off than the majority of people in the countries where they live.

Interesting theorisations about the hill people from this region include the notions of "Southeast Asian Massif" and "Zomia". Southeast Asian Massif was proposed by Laval University anthropologist Jean Michaud in 1997. This high region extending eastward from the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau covers more than 2.5 million square kilometers and comprises nearly one hundred million marginal peoples. This large area is inside the fringe of ten states and at the middle of none, stretching across the standard regional designations (South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia); along with its ecological diversity and its relation to states, it arouses a lot of interest. It stands for an original entity of study, a type of international Appalachia, and a different way in which to study regions as illustrated in Michaud's "Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif" (Scarecrow Press, 2006). Zomia (geography) is a geographical term coined in 2002 by historian Willem van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam to refer to the huge massif of mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments based in the population centers of the lowlands. The massif arose during the Alpine orogeny, when the African, Indian and Cimmerian Plates, and smaller Asian terranes, collided with that of Eurasia. The name is from Zomi, a term for highlander common to several related Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the India-Bangladesh-Burma border area.

The exact boundaries of Zomia differ among scholars: all would include the highlands of north Indochina (north Vietnam and all Laos,) Thailand, the Shan State of northern Burma, and the mountains of Southwest China, others extend the region as far West as Tibet, north India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These areas share a common elevated, rugged terrain, and have been the home of ethnic minorities that have preserved their local cultures by residing far from state control and influence. Other scholars have used the term to discuss the similar ways that Southeast Asian governments have handled minority groups. Once such is Yale University Professor James C. Scott, who address the issue in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. From the Preface:

“[Hill tribes] seen from the valley kingdoms as “our living ancestors,” “what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism, and civilization” [are on the contrary] best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys — slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare.”

A 2013 newspaper article from the Bangkok Post said that "Nearly a million hill people and forest dwellers are still treated as outsiders, criminals even, since most live in protected forests. Viewed as national security threats, hundreds of thousands of them are refused citizenship although many are natives to the land."[23]

The Central Highlands of Vietnam have traditionally been populated by a majority of hill tribes, all of who are culturally distinct from the ethnic Vietnamese population of the lowlands. Collectively known as Montagnard (French for "mountain people"), they are also referred derogatorily as mọi (literally "savage" in Vietnamese).[24] While Vietnamese expansion into the Central Highlands dates back to the French colonial period, large-scale settlement did not occur until after the Vietnam War. Today, the Montagnards form a minority in much of the Central Highlands, with the exception of a few areas.[25]

Local Vietnamese assisted French colonial armies in suppressing rebellions among the hill tribes during the early 20th century, with some calls for completely ridding the Central Highlands of the "uncivilized" hill tribes for large-scale Vietnamese and French settlement. Political and economic barriers prevented hill tribes from obtaining high levels of education and entering commerce, although outright legal discrimination against Montagnards was made illegal by the colonial government.[26] During the Vietnam War, American Special Forces trained many hill tribes in Vietnam to stop Viet Cong activity in the region and to prevent them from aligning with the Viet Cong.[27]

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the world's second-largest island. A central east-west mountain range dominates the geography of New Guinea and contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4884 m high. The island is populated by very nearly a thousand different tribal groups and a near-equivalent number of separate languages, which makes New Guinea the most linguistically diverse area in the world. They fall into one of two groups, speakers of the Papuan languages and later arrivals who speak Austronesian languages.

The gardens of the New Guinea Highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm/yr (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. The people use complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Native gardeners are as or more successful than most scientific farmers in raising certain crops. Early garden crops – many of which are indigenous – included sugarcane, Pacific bananas, yams, and taro, while sago and pandanus were two commonly exploited native forest crops. Today's staples – sweet potatoes and pigs – are later arrivals.[28]

The people of New Guinea were traditionally warlike, with constant feuds over territory, although violence has greatly reduced in recent years.[29]

The Appalachian Mountains are a vast system of mountains in eastern North America. Before the Europeans reached the area around 1650, the mountains were inhabited by Algonquian people; speakers of Iroquoian languages such as the Cherokee; and Siouan people such as the Occaneechi, Tutelo and Monacan. The European invaders were ruthless in their treatment of these hill people, many of whom they killed or forced to move into unfamiliar territory to the west. Many others died of diseases such as smallpox introduced from Europe. Few of the early inhabitants remain.[30]

Some of the people who live in the mountains today retain distinct cultural characteristics. The Hatfield–McCoy feud (1878–1891) involved two warring families of the West Virginia–Kentucky backcountry along the Tug Fork river, off the Big Sandy River. Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families.[31] The 1972 film Deliverance depicted the hill people as backward and hostile to outsiders, and the film implies some of them are inbred – a stereotype of the "Hillbilly" culture.[32]

As the Europeans continued to move west, they took most of the lands of the people who lived in the Rockies, forcing the Ute, Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Yaqui and other tribes to assimilate or move onto reservations. Some adapted to farming or sheep herding, but they are the most impoverished of all ethnic groups in the USA.

The Andes form the world's longest exposed mountain range, a continuous chain of highland along the western coast of South America. The range is over 7,000 km (4,300 mi) long, 200–700 km (300 miles) wide (widest between 18° to 20°S latitude), and of an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft).

Before the Spanish invasion led by Francisco Pizarro in 1532 the Andes were primarily inhabited by Quechua peoples such as the Inca, Chancas, Huancas and Cañari in the north, and Aymaras further south. Their economy was based on the potato crop, which originated in the area, and the llama and alpaca, used for their wool and meat. Unlike most mountain people, the inhabitants of the Andes appear to have been generally unwarlike.[37]

^Banuazizi, Ali and Myron Weiner (eds.). 1994. The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East), Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-2608-8